Via the extremely informative Corporate Law and Governance, I picked up the news that the FSA said on Friday that it was extending the shorting disclosure regime again. The full policy statement is here (PDF).
I'm actually a bit surprised by this. The FSA says that the decision was taken "to minimise the potential for market abuse and disorderly markets in UK financial sector stocks". Yet as I blogged previously the FSA's previous discussion paper on shorting was pretty positive about the practice, arguing that it delivered market benefits.
The other interesting thing to note in the latest statement is the support for the extension of the disclosure regime from 4 'trade associations' (see pages 4 and 5). Based on the list of respondents, and assuming that the likes of the ISLA and AIMA are opposed, it looks likely that the more 'traditional' investment lobby groups were in favour. This is no great shock in one sense, as I am pretty sure the ABI have said as much publicly, but what does it say about their implicit views about how markets operate? Or is it 'long-only lobbying'?
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